Africa in 2025: Decolonizing Africa’s identity

Editor’s note: Talk Africa is a weekly talk show that brings together guests from across Africa and beyond to discuss pressing African issues and global topics, amplifying the continent’s voice and showcasing diverse perspectives and independent thinking. This episode is the third of the year-end special.

The push to reclaim Africa’s identity intensified in 2025 as part of the continent’s long and complex journey of decolonization. The identity question is rooted in the dual historical trauma of the slave trade and colonialism.

For centuries, these twin evils slowly disrupted and degraded indigenous cultures, political systems, and African self-esteem. In their place, Western values were firmly planted and nurtured.

However, in another year marked by the push for reparations, the retrieval of artifacts, and the renaming of public spaces, Africa made slow but deliberate progress in the pursuit of reclaiming its identity. How are these efforts redefining Africa’s identity in a globalized world?

African identity

“African identity is about resisting many of the stereotypes and limited frameworks that have been placed upon us without our control,” said Molemo Moiloa, an artist and a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. “So, I think the search for African identity is about reclaiming what is ours and pushing back against racial narratives. It’s also about an Africa with agency,” added Moiloa.

Prof. Zaynab El Bernoussi viewed the search for African identity as a tension between aspirations and what she describes as the “harsh realities” facing African people.

“I’m particularly thinking about how there are impediments holding back African identity. I think, for instance, about my passport. It limits my mobility, my rights, and my access to legal resources,” observed Bernoussi, a distinguished scholar specializing in dignity politics, international relations, and the international political economy.

She called for the African Union (AU) to play an active role in advancing the African identity project.

“The (AU) cultural charter speaks to the big challenge,” Bernoussi observed, characterizing the identity project as “very tricky and hard to consolidate."

Moiloa cited South Africa’s struggles with xenophobia and the internal conflict of “pride in being South African, being black” on the one hand, and carrying an identity that is questioned by others on the other. She said that, in relation to the rest of the world, African identity stands on “shaky ground." In this journey, she said, Africa needs solidarity to overcome “boundaries and limitations” that are quite substantial.

She singled out the lasting colonial legacy of language as one of the factors that still deeply separate Africa. “We still have Lusophone, Anglophone, Francophone… and several Arabic-speaking countries across the African continent,” Moiloa noted, pointing out the immense difficulty of crossing these boundaries. She added, “They're not our differences; they're the differences of who we were colonized by. And yet we still really struggle to overcome them.”

Push for restitution

Hassoum Ceesay, Director-General of the National Center for Arts and Culture in the Gambia, called this emerging identity consciousness — manifested in the retrieval of looted artifacts held in Western museums — “cultural nationalism or heritage.”

“Some of these objects had ritual significance. Some had ceremonial significance. So they are currently displayed completely out of context,” observed Ceesay. However, he admitted that some African rulers abetted the removal of these cultural artifacts.

Moiloa questioned the idea of “universal museums,” saying it was the standard response of top global museums to restitution claims from around the world, not just Africa. Western museums used this pretext to resist the return of African artifacts and justify their custody of the relics.

Moiloa argued that Africans created these artifacts and therefore have the right to request their return. However, she noted, the question of whether these objects should be returned to museums remains an open one.

“I think it’s often assumed that the appropriate place for these cultural forms of value is in museums. That’s not always the case,” Moiloa argued. She pointed out that, given the artifacts’ ceremonial, spiritual, and communal value, displaying them in a museum upon their return simply replicates the Western conservation model and defeats the purpose of their retrieval—decolonization.

“I think it’s a combination of the two,” Ceesay riposted, in response to the question of whether the identity crisis is entirely a function of external forces, or whether Africa bears its share of the blame by failing to invest in telling its own story, conserving its cultures, and prioritizing its indigenous languages.

“We have to teach our history. We have to teach cultural studies, valorize our languages, and use them in our parliaments and official functions. Let’s develop language policies.”

Ceesay observed that gaining political and economic independence was the first step of decolonization. Restitution, he said, remains an unfinished aspect of decolonization because “Africa’s heritage… Africa’s identity is still held in museums and storage rooms of former colonial powers.”

In going after its stolen artifacts, Africa seeks restitution that is multifaceted, one that enables it to reclaim its identity, deliver justice, and foster spiritual continuity. However, some concerns could be more symbolic than substantive in these acts. Moiloa proposed restitution that goes beyond the retrieval of objects and puts the people at its center. She argued this could encourage deeper, much more productive engagement with restitution processes. “(If you put the people first)… you see the resumption of discarded ceremonies within communities, the restoration of abandoned age-set activities. So the return of something from a museum in another country is the spark; it’s certainly not the endpoint,” explained Moiloa.

In this quest for restitution and identity, Ceesay said Africa can potentially realize the reparations and historical justice it seeks. However, he said much work still needs to be done collecting and inventorying artifacts within the continent itself.